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So when we received this submission, there was no way in hell we were going to just sit on it and not give you a gander into the seedy, debaucherous, and yet, strangely intriguing life of SG. Christ on a bike, I really love this submission. A reader that’s willing to share what many would probably frown upon. Judge. Do what you will. But read this. –theVar

I’ll have to be presumptuous for a minute and say that for guys like me, being 30 is harder than it is for most people (and don’t say a word about how I’m already a couple of years over 30, that’s just bad form). The reason behind this selfish assumption is that everything I expected to do with my life as an adult, I already did—with panache—in my 20’s. Sadly, that lifestyle’s left me a hollow, unhealthy, burnt-out shell of a man.

When you picture your life at 30 as a kid…even as a 20 year-old, what do you think? You think that somehow, all of these things are going to work out and you’ll “have your shit together” by the time you’re 30. This leaves plenty of time for smoking crystal meth out of a lightbulb while some strange blonde uses too much damn teeth on your cock in a strange bedroom that you can’t help but notice is decorated with Disney characters, doesn’t it? They always use too much damn teeth when they’re excited.

I will never feel remorseful about the sex (well, most of it), and I can’t really feel bad about the drug abuse and partying, and the years spent on the road touring with my band. That shit was fun…most of the time. But in some ways, this lifestyle was a curse. All it set me up for later in life is a bloated liver, chronic insomnia, and a too-little-too-late effort that got me a useless college degree. While my successful friends were studying and working up the ladder in their careers, I was thinking about baseball so that I could last long enough to fuck both of the slutty hookers in my bed (one of them being my wife at the time).

Come to think of it, all of that was pretty great. I mean, yeah I pay for it by being a loser now, but I mean at least in the experimentation section of my life, I can say I left it all out on the field. I mean, screwing two girls (again, one of them being my wife at the time) on top of the roof of the house in Westminster on ecstasy and after drinking a ton of booze—that’s a pretty goddamn noble high, wouldn’t you say? And that’s really what I’ve been good at most of my life. Interesting, awesome drug-frenzied sexual exploits.

But apart from the stories it gives me, that don’t mean shit now. All I want to do now is relax. I want to have enough damn money to support my kids, because that’s what they deserve. And while some new idiot is banging some hooker (my now ex-wife) in Boulder, I am left in Denver to maintain sanity long enough to be a good father. Really, if I had to boil my life down to one sentence it would be essentially this: My thirties are being spent recovering from an awesome youth, so that I may maintain some sort of dignity and sanity to be a father. Man, it still kills me sometimes that I (Me!) am someone’s father. And not just someone’s father, but the father of three somehow (by somehow I mean somehow despite me and their mother) awesome little daughters.

Wild as my sex life was back in the day, this poem more suitably represents my love life now:

Au Bad Aubade

In the light of day that breaks
through dusty blinds and fractured glass,
my room will glow with early sun
and reek of booze and stale clothes.

Now the drinking, veiled thinking
hides my lack of social grace.
The fuzzy boozing buzz dilutes
the extra twenty pounds.

It’s four a.m., another drink?
The sky still has to make a choice
between the navy strips of night
and strips of powder blue for dawn.

Without the bourbon, night itself
intoxicates and makes my head
which lacks the hair of younger men
distinguished, not just “bald.”

So let us dance before the rise,
fill a high ball, Jack and Coke,
and feel the chill against our lips
that turns to warmth beyond the tongues.

I promise now, to you, my dear:
before the daylight wakes you up,
I’ll shave and bathe and dress myself
to soften your regrets of us.

Before I have to drop the news
that my kids are due in school and
baby-momma wants her dues and
kitty ruined your new shoes,

I promise not to call again and
serve you breakfast bloody marys.
I’ll take you to your car on Main
and let you go about your life